The Dead Boys are one of the most iconic bands of the punk era. They only put out two albums in the late seventies, but both of them are hallmarks of the genre. Young, Loud, And Snotty is a perfect punk slab of vinyl that includes songs like "Sonic Reducer," which may be one of the five best punk tunes ever written. We Have Come For Your Children is another legendary album with classic anthems like "Third Generation Nation." Their live shows were infamous for their violence and rowdiness, and even featured lead singer Stiv Bators cutting himself up on stage. Guitarist Cheetah Chrome's ferocious leads are like a slashing force of nature. Few groups captured the spirit of the New York punk scene better than the Dead Boys. The owner of CBGB was even their manager for a while. Over the years, the band has re-formed on a number of occasions and their latest incarnation will be playing at Burger Boogaloo on Saturday, July 6th.(More on Burger Boogaloo HERE!)

Following yesterday's primaries New Yorkers moved closer to determining who might replace current three term NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in next month's election. Bill de Blasio, who was the most liberal Democrat in the race, racked up way more votes than any of his rivals in the Democratic primary yesterday which is significant in that the mayoral hopeful promised a totally different approach to city governing compared to the New York City of the past two decades under both Bloomberg and Rudolph W. Giuliani. His platform, which the average New Yorker can fully relate to, has been built on shrinking that increasing gap between New York's very rich and its poor, and on making sweeping changes to New York's long controversial aggressive police practices such as stop and frisk. In his campaign he personalized this issue by including his bi-racial, Afro wearing son Dante as an example of a target of racial profiling by NYPD under the current regime. In sharp contrast was the winner on the Republican side; Joseph J. Lhota whose campaign was built on a promise of continuing a tough, no-nonsense approach to both crime-fighting and city budgeting. In short Lhota would continue the tight reined city governing of Bloomberg and Giuliani (maybe even more extreme) while de Blasio would present a total departure and change in his running of the city. Either way it is going to be a very interesting election come November 5th.

Today, September 11th, in New York City is a most solemn day. Even a dozen full years after 9/11 New Yorkers still gristle at the thought of that devastating day when everyone across the city was somehow impacted by the tragedy that unfolded. To commemorate this twelve year anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil, when 3,000 died, there are numerous memorial events - some personal, some public - taking place around the city including, naturally, downtown Manhattan at the site of World Trade Center. Perhaps the most significant of all though is the national campaign under way that asks people to take the day to pause and reflect on what happened. It is also to help build awareness for the memorial museum, to open next year after delays, devoted to what happened that day. In that end workers are busy in their efforts to get the The National September 11 Memorial & Museum finished and open by Spring 2014. In a recent public statement the museum/memorial's director of education and public programming is author Clifford Chanin, who penned the book The Stories They Tell: Artifacts from the National September 11 Memorial Museum, said that the museum will feature hundreds of artifacts. Each one of these will capture individual personal stories of those directly impacted by that fateful day in September 2001. Due to several factors including real estate disputes and the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy the memorial/museum project, which should have been open by this year's anniversary, got delayed. To raise both funds and awareness of the project a campaign has been launched that asks people to “Take a day to remember the day that changed us forever.” Today in both the general media (TV, newspapers, websites) and on social media sites. So expect to see/hear a lot more about this today on such websites as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube that is also asking for minimal donations to go towards the staggering $700million price tag of the new museum/memorial. More info here.

The former frontman of Mink Deville passed away yesterday from recently found pancreatic cancer; he was 55. Making his initial splash with Mink Deville during the mid/late 70's in the early days of the CBGB's scene. The band, like many of their contemporaries, got lumped in with the then-fashionable punk scene. For Mink Deville this was especially ridiculous, as their whole schtick was about as far from the Dead Boys as you could get.

Their first LP, produced by Jack Nitzsche and called Cabretta, is an important piece of the late 70's NY puzzle. To me, it gives the listener a real street level glimpse of the time period that few other records from the era can match. Kill City by Iggy & James Williamson and Lou Reed's infamous ranting on Take No Prisoners cover similar bar sleaze territory, but Cabretta tempers all that with soothing background singers, classic pop songwriting and great percussion arrangements. Willie also brought to the mix a true believer's approach to mythmaking and storytelling that keeps songs such as "Venus of Ave. D" from falling into camp territory. I've spent many a drunken evening listening to him spin his street tough yarns on both Cabretta and its follow up, Return To Magenta, but I never acquired a taste for his more polished 80's & 90's work. "Spanish Stroll," featured on Cabretta, was a top 20 UK hit and his song "Miracles," featured in the Rob Reiner film the Princess Bride, was nominated for an Academy Award. Willy even performed it at the awards ceremony. His live performances were legendary, pleading on his knees and pouring his soul into heartbreaking ballads.

Although his stateside career never broke big, in Europe his career was quite healthy-- even if his decades of heroin abuse weren't. With a reputation second only to Johnny Thunders, Willy indeed lived the life he sang about. Drugs, suicides and broken marriages paved over much of his intense life. In fact, he was the person that had to identify Johnny Thunders'body in New Orleans, as he was the only person in town who knew him. There's some excellent interviews regarding Johnny's death in the Thunders documentary Born To Lose. It seems that life had, in recent years, picked up for Mr. DeVille. But, upon preparations for Hep C treatments, a nasty bit of pancreatic cancer was found and it only took a couple of months to take him out...

Damn! It's already November 8th! Where did the time go? It seems like only yesterday when this AMOEBLOGcorner of the Amoeba Musicwebsite started up. But actually it has been jumping off since March of this year -- not that long ago, true, but long enough for the accumulation of a bounty of engaging AMOEBLOGS covering oodles of different topics (music and otherwise) from a stable of gifted and insightful AMOEBLOGGERs including (but not limited to) Mike Battaglia, Job O Brother, Brad Schelden, phil blankenship, Miss Ess, Gomez Comes Alive, Whitmore, and the Bay Area Crew. In all, there are hundreds and hundreds (well in excess of a thousand) of AMOEBLOGS posted and available to read in the Archives right here. Just for me alone there are 170 AMOEBLOGS archived and I am only one of a dozen active AMOEBLOGGERs.

Glancing back at some of these AMOEBLOGS I have posted since May, I think it is time that I should follow up on a few of them. First up was the post (one of several) about the historic Paul McCartney instore at Amoeba Music Hollywoodstore on June 27th that generated a ton of COMMENTS from Amoeba shoppers who were lucky enough to make it inside to witness the former Beatle's memorable performance. Anyways, the follow up, good news, is that next week (November 13th) one of the songs from Paul's performance that day ("I Saw Her Standing There") will be released on an extremely limited edition 12" vinyl-only release titled Amoeba's Secret. This Paul McCartney maxi-single will feature four songs from the exclusive instore: “Only Mama Knows” & "That Was Me" (both originally on his latest release) plus ”C Moon” (the classic Paul McCartney & Wings song), and of course, the aforementioned "I Saw Her Standing There." The sure to be highly collectable, vinyl-only Amoeba's Secret will be available in all three Amoeba Music stores next Tuesday (11/13) and also here at amoeba.com -- priced at $5.98. (Note that this rare release will not be released digitally or as a CD and since it is limited, is bound to sell out fast.)

It's sad to me that after fighting for years to save the seminal punk club he founded, CBGB's, and losing that battle, he then lost his life less than a year later.

He was 75 years old.

R.I.P Hilly.

Here's a performance by the Ramones at CBGB in 1977.

And here's Blondie performing there the same year:

It's lame and depressing how almost all the cool parts of New York City are being swallowed up by rents and landlords and all that gentrifying junk.

The first time I ever went to NYC I was 19 years old and super wide eyed and I dragged my friends to CBGB. I coulda sworn I could still smell Lou Reed and Dee Dee Ramone in the dirt coating the street there in the Bowery. We didn't have fake IDs and we were obviously too young to get in to the club but I went into the shop next door and got a shirt and wore it proudly for about 5 years....until Hot Topic started hawking them and every mall rat across America suddenly had one...Everything rock n roll started to feel even more hollow at that point.

Yikes, I'm a downer today!
At least there are still bands like the White Stripes and at least Neil Young still puts out records. Phew! Rock n roll will never die.